2013 mini cooper Reviews and News

The raging, flood-swollen river fifty feet below was quickly eating away the only road out. The torrent had eroded the hillside under the road, and the outer half of the blacktop was just a crust, with no support underneath. The inner lane looked stable enough, for the time being, but the river's appetite wasn't waning, and unless we got the cars past before it fell completely, they'd be stuck between the resulting chasm and the dead end in the other direction until a new road was built. Our plan to drive this Mini Cooper convertible from Delhi to the top of the world would be thwarted on day three.

What could we do but take a deep and possibly final breath, floor the throttle, and hope the river didn't choose that moment to swallow the rest of the road? Looking back over our ten-day, 2000-mile journey, it's not even a danger highlight. Driving a road car to Khardung La -- the Himalayan mountain pass that claims to be the highest drivable road in the world at 5602 meters, or 18,380 feet, or 790 feet higher than Everest base camp, or half the cruising altitude of a passenger jet -- was never going to be easy, but we didn't foresee the varied and inventive ways in which this trip would try to kill us.

We knew about India's horrific traffic-death record. We knew about the dangers of driving at extreme altitudes: confusion and vomiting are merely incompatible with dignity, but pulmonary and cerebral edema are incompatible with life. Medication helped our bodies adapt: any drive that requires drugs must be interesting, right? Same goes when your map has cease-fire lines and disputed territories and lines of control marked on it. India, Pakistan, and China face down each other in the Himalayas. Bill Clinton called this "the most dangerous place on earth."

We really didn't need the freak rains that killed thirty-four people across northern India our first days there, ate our road, and caused the landslides that would later nearly end our trip. Particularly not when we were doing this in a Mini. India has just become this riotously successful British brand's one-hundredth global market, but Minis will need to be more than urban baubles to survive India's tough roads, so we thought we'd take one over the toughest road we could find. We're pretty certain that no Mini and no convertible car have ever been driven over Khardung La, and we liked the idea of going roof-down to the roof of the world.

First, however, you have to get there. Photographer Charlie Magee and I landed in Delhi in 100-degree heat and heavy humidity and met Bunny Punia, an Indian journalist and old friend who has been over Khardung La on two wheels and four but never in something with as little ground clearance as our Mini, a 122-hp Cooper with the six-speed automatic that is standard in India. My insurance policy is a rented Toyota Fortuner, a locally made, proper off-roader comparable to the 4Runner. We've filled the Fortuner with jerry cans, spare tires, walkie-talkies, a steel towing cable, and essential supplies such as water and bags of cheese puffs. All of these will be needed.

A long way in India feels a lot longer than anywhere else: from Delhi we have a two-day drive just to get to the edge of the Himalayas about 300 miles away. A couple of hours in, Magee says he's already using his testicles as worry beads, and we've seen most of the sights that make Indian roads such an intense, exhausting, terrifying experience. We dodge the gutsy remains of a stray dog and spot a beggar sleeping in the street only when he shifts onto his side -- his near-naked body has taken on the exact shade of the dust in which he lies. There are cows in the road and stick-thin rickshaw riders who arch and strain against the pedals. There is sadness in the dissipated ambition of big projects started but seemingly abandoned -- bridges and bypasses and shopping complexes and cinemas -- and in the environmental havoc: great piles of rubbish and dense, black clouds of soot from the ancient, gaudily decorated cargo trucks. It can be hard to see the mysticism in modern India.

We spent our first night in the relative calm and cool of Shimla, an old British hill station at 7200 feet, and our second at Solang at 8500 feet. Gaining little more than a thousand feet each night slows progress but helps the body adapt to the thin air. As we drove up to our hotel in the dark, we could hear the thundering of the swollen river. People in the lower villages were already on the streets, wondering what they could do to protect themselves. By morning some had lost their homes. Our hotel was high enough to be safe, but the road that led to it wasn't. Getting the cars out required some nerve. Worse -- almost insurmountable -- obstacles lay ahead.

Two roads lead to the high, exotic Kashmiri provinces of Zanskar and Ladakh in India's northeast corner and to Leh, their biggest town, which sits 11,500 feet above sea level at the base of the Khardung La pass. Trucks must use these two roads during the four summer months when they're open to deliver the region's annual supplies. There's some tarmac but also long stretches of deep mud, boulder crawls, river crossings, and rough, unmade single-tracks with nothing to catch you if the edge gives way as you squeeze past an oncoming, nonslowing truck. Each road in has a killer pass that often seizes with stuck vehicles even in the best weather. Ours is literally a killer: Rohtang La, or the "ground of corpses," named for its failed traversers. It looked like Rohtang might kill our trip, too. A massive landslide had obliterated a long stretch of the pass, and it didn't look fixable.

This was a vision of driving hell. Any kind of hell, actually. The heavy rain and jostling trucks had reduced the surface to shin-deep mud. Thick banks of clouds gave the place an oppressive, ominous feel. Buses three days from Delhi stood stationary, their sides streaked with vomit from altitude-sick passengers. The ground stank of urine. In the landslide, a gang of migrant workers from Bihar, one of India's poorest states, dodged the falling rocks, then used them to fill the deep ruts dug by the few trucks that made it through before a fresh slide closed the track again. The line of trucks in front of us made it impossible to get through before nightfall, so we left the Mini on the mountainside and returned to Solang in the Fortuner. We'd try again tomorrow. We gave a guy who lived on the mountain five dollars to let us park the Mini by his tent. Clad only in a loose cloth around the midriff, he proudly produced a mobile phone and said he'd give us a call if there were any problems.

Things didn't look much better in the morning. Another big rockslide had hit a truck, pushing it halfway over the edge and destroying the road surface. Soldiers using two excavators took until midday to rescue it in the craziest vehicle recovery I'll ever see: one digger arm pulling the truck forward, the other cupping its backside to stop it from slipping over the edge and pulling the first excavator down with it. The machines started clearing a gap in the mountainside where the road once was; big, sharp rocks hidden just below the mud. Dodging minor rockfalls, I sloshed through on foot and thought the Mini had a fifty-fifty chance of making it through without terminal damage. But the road back down was now so churned up that we couldn't retreat.

In how many ways could this go wrong? If the Mini got stuck, we didn't fancy getting out to attach a towrope during a landslide, so we hooked it to the Toyota before we entered the worst section. So now not only might both of our vehicles get stuck, or pull each other over the edge, or be smashed by falling rocks (I raised the convertible top, as if that would do any good), but if the cable snapped it might lash out at the shins of the spectators who were ignoring the falling rocks to watch the trucks buck and bellow through the gap.

It lasted maybe thirty seconds, the Fortuner jerking the Mini forward as it scraped its belly on the rocks beneath, the noises coming from the underside sounding like a pod of dolphins being massacred by Japanese fishermen. My elation on the other side is hard to describe: after thirty-six hours in which I was fairly sure I'd have to call off the whole trip, the Mini had no visible damage, its onboard status report saying, almost unbelievably, "OK -- No faults."

Magee had brought the theme from The Italian Job and saved it until now: I wonder if it's ever been played in Kashmir before. Beyond the Rohtang Pass, Led Zeppelin is the only soundtrack, and we saved the eponymous song for the moment we crossed the border into Kashmir. We stopped in a little hotel with hard beds but with a satellite dish that allowed us to watch, with a bunch of stoned Tibetans, the Olympics. The next morning, we set out to cover the 200 miles to Leh through the most heart-stopping, otherworldly scenery you'll ever see.

Because these high, remote, serene, protected provinces are so hard to reach, they feel quite apart from the crowded chaos of the rest of India. The roads are almost deserted; the people visibly ethnically Tibetan. They smile beatifically and wave at our odd, out-of-place car as we pass. It wasn't the height superlatives that made us want to drive to Khardung La. It was the landscapes of Zanskar and Ladakh -- vast valleys barred in the very far distance by rows of snowy sawtooth peaks, wide turquoise rivers with soft sand banks whipped into weird fantasy castellations by the winds, and roads cut into the sheer sides of flat gray or metallic red mountains, looping farther and higher than any others, anywhere, each bend revealing another alt-rock album-cover view that leaves you torn between stopping for a picture or driving on to the next, higher, better view or just weeping at the barren, alien beauty of it all.

We were getting seriously high now, with the iPhone altimeter passing 15,000 feet. I was reciting lists of presidents backward to confirm that I wasn't getting confused and was still fit to drive, and the thin air made the sun whiter and fiercer as it scorched my nose and cheeks. As the air pressure dropped, we could hear the occasional ricochet as another bag of cheese puffs detonated in the trunk. Two hundred miles is a very long way when you're scanning every inch of road for potholes and puncture risks, and your speed suddenly drops to a crawl when the tarmac ends and the "road" heads off into unmarked desert. The hell of Rohtang had played havoc with our schedule, and our planned refueling station was closed, forcing us to buy gasoline from roadside traders in a little truck stop called Pang. One trader, blind drunk, emerged with two jerry cans, smoking a cigarette as he started trying to fill the Fortuner with diesel. He insisted the other can held petrol but a sniff told us it didn't. We bought gas from someone who was sober instead.

It took us until midnight to cover those 200 miles, which meant driving over the Taglang La pass -- at a claimed 17,480 feet second in height to Khardung La -- in the dark. When, exactly, did we start thinking it was OK -- normal, even -- to scale the world's alleged second-highest pass over unmade, unmarked tracks in now-near-freezing temperatures and pitch-black night in a Mini with the roof down? At least we couldn't see the drop-offs.

The Mini didn't seem bothered at all. Our observations on the car might not seem relevant if you won't ever drive yours at 17,000 feet, but we were genuinely impressed with its toughness. After Rohtang, the exhaust was as dimpled as a golf ball and the steel oil pan had been seriously reprofiled but fortunately hadn't cracked. Talcum-fine desert sand deluged the cabin and the roof mechanism, but both worked flawlessly, and the Continental run-flat tires didn't puncture despite covering hundreds of miles over vicious little stones. The engine started to lose torque only above 13,000 feet. On start-up, the Mini idled roughly until the ECU recognized the lack of oxygen and smoothed out the engine. Most important, the brakes were always there, whether we were stamping on them to avoid another oncoming truck or constantly brushing them to bring the car down 6000 vertical feet in an hour. If you're going to sell a car successfully in a hundred markets, it needs to be engineered for all circumstances. You're particularly grateful for those qualities when you're three miles up and hundreds of miles from a mobile-phone signal, a hospital, or any other kind of help.

With 28,000 people, the city of Leh felt like Manhattan after the utter, eerie isolation of the previous days. I felt like the coolest man in town in my Mini convertible. Everyone, from Buddhist monks to Western travelers, stared at it like it was a supercar. Locals who had never seen a convertible demanded to see the roof in action. The final, twenty-five-mile drive from Leh to Khardung La looked relatively tame compared with what we'd been through, but, just in case, we had the car blessed by a young monk at the ancient Tsemo monastery on the way up. The climb took two hours, the tarmac ending with about ten miles to go and leaving us with a couple of deeply unpleasant rock crawls to negotiate. The Mini, cambered toward oblivion, trickled calmly and sure-footedly over them, as we'd come to expect.

We rounded a bend and were there: Khardung La, 17,608 feet by my altimeter and, regardless of the inaccuracies and disputed claims, as high as you can drive a regular car. I'd been reading about this place for ten years, had planned this trip for months, and was convinced at least twice in the last few days that I wouldn't make it. I leapt out of the Mini but nearly fell back in with a sudden dizzy head-rush from the lack of oxygen. You walk in pigeon steps across the fifty-yard pass, eyeballing soaring Himalayan peaks in the far distance but at the same altitude. You obey the notices in English and, bizarrely, in Spanish that order you not to sacrifice any animals. There's a hut with oxygen, which we didn't need, and the world's highest cafeteria that serves cups of tea, which we did. Loud Buddhist prayer chants are played on a loop by the little monastery almost hidden behind a tangle of prayer flags, and, entirely appropriately for the end of a journey in this most English of German-owned cars, a detachment of Indian soldiers played cricket three and a third miles up in the sky. I joined in, of course, and was caught out on my third ball. It started to snow, and it suddenly felt like the right time to leave. It felt like we'd pushed our luck as far as it would go.

Much has changed at Mini since we last saw the John Cooper Works GP, the hardest-core, racing-oriented version of the basic hatchback. Back then, the brand still subsisted on its basic two-door models. Now, the brand offers crossovers, coupes, and lots of odd stuff in between. As we pull into the Circuito Mallorca RennArena (yes, there's a racetrack on Mallorca), it's easy to forget all those less-than-pure models: we're about to drive the new GP, the ultimate distillation of the Mini brand's motoring mission.

You'll have to forgive our sense of time warp, for the new GP looks a lot like the old GP, which appeared in 2006 as a swan song for the last-generation Mini. It again comes only on the two-door hardtop model and only in gray metallic paint. A large rear wing adds downforce at higher speeds and looks cool at lower ones. New seventeen-inch wheels and some fast-looking decals are also part of the deal. "I have to admit, I love stickers," says Mini designer Anders Warming. The interior makeover is no subtler. The Recaro front seats have beefy bolsters and the rear seats don't exist -- a bright red shock-tower bar takes their place. Stitched black leather wraps the dash and attempts to dress up the rather basic Cooper interior.

Despite all these enhancements, it's the basic essence of the Mini design that strikes us when we approach the GP and climb into the driver's seat. The hardtop's accessible size and the wonderful simplicity -- it's still just a little box on wheels -- contrast sharply with the overwrought and sometimes pudgy styling of Mini's newer offerings.

The GP coughs to life with a boisterous burble from its center-exit exhaust. The John Cooper Works Mini's 1.6-liter turbocharged four-cylinder has been tweaked just a bit further to produce 218 hp (U.S. cars will be rated at 211 hp). The GP also features Mini's first production application of coil-over dampers, derived from what Mini uses in its one-make Challenge racing series. They can adjust ride height by 20 millimeters (0.8 inch) and also allow Mini to use stiffer, lower springs. Before heading out for our laps, we set stability control to GP mode. That prevents traction control from cutting power and puts the front brakes to use as an electronic limited-slip differential.

The obligatory pre-lap safety presentation warned drivers against drifting recklessly through corners. This proved unnecessary -- the GP's tail stayed firmly planted through the turns. Sticky Kumho summer tires, developed specifically for the GP, stuck to the smooth tarmac without a hint of drama. In the few instances where lack of skill and good sense overwhelmed the tires' prodigious grip, the car simply plowed straight ahead. Adjusting the coil-over suspension -- a procedure that requires raising the car off the ground -- might change its cornering characteristics, as might completely disabling stability control. The electronics, the tires, and the suspension tweaks do seem to reduce inside wheelspin and torque steer, but digging out of turns still takes some work: second gear is incredibly short, and there's not enough low-end torque to stay in third gear. The constant shifting of the six-speed manual is plenty fun but not particularly quick.

In other words, the GP, for all its high-dollar components, drives a lot like a Mini Cooper. That's not a bad thing. The small, simple steering wheel transmits more road feel than many high-priced sports cars, and we barely need to adjust our grip through the track's multiple hairpin turns. The front wheels, retuned for increased negative camber, respond with even more immediacy, and the stiffened suspension cuts out what little body roll ever existed. The brakes, fortified up front with six-piston calipers, feel firm and powerful despite repeated outings with little cool-down time.

Mini will build only 2000 GPs, including an initial allotment of just 500 for the United States. Brand loyalists will likely, and quickly, snap up every last one of them. That's just as well -- it's hard to imagine many other people coughing up $39,950 for a two-seat hatchback that has less power than the $25,595 Ford Focus ST. Indeed, the inherent limit to the hardtop's appeal goes a long way toward explaining why the Mini brand has and will continue to expand its offerings. And yet, the GP also reminds us -- and, we hope, BMW decision makers -- what makes Mini so unique and so fun.

Just how much Mini do you need? These days, there are so many choices that you can almost buy a Mini on a custom-tailored basis, selecting from the original hatchback, the Clubman wagon, the convertible, the coupe, the roadster, and the five-door Countryman crossover. Beginning next May, Mini will add a large three-door hatchback to the mix, the Paceman, which was previewed as a concept at the 2011 Detroit auto show and is, in effect, a smaller and more stylish Countryman.

Happily, there's more to the Paceman than the mere deletion of a couple of doors. The need to redesign most of the Countryman's side panels for the three-door allowed Mini designers to give the Paceman a unique look. This is a much sportier-looking bigger Mini, almost coupe-like in silhouette with its sinking roofline, more steeply raked tailgate, muscled rear fenders, and shapely new wraparound tail lamps. The result looks surprisingly similar to a three-door Range Rover Evoque and certainly isn't short on appeal.

The Paceman's interior will look pretty familiar to anyone who drives a Countryman. The only rear-seat option is a pair of individual chairs that can also be had in the Countryman, and the only other interior change is that the electric window switches have been relocated to the doors from the center console, an improvement also destined for the 2013 model year Countryman. Door count apart, the Paceman is structurally much the same as the Countryman and shares the same wheelbase and track. But its roof is 1.6 inches lower, costing occupants only 0.4 inch of headroom, partly because it rides 0.4 inch lower. That's consistent with this Mini's mission of providing a more dynamic driving experience than the Countryman while at the same time providing more space than the standard Mini Cooper hatchback. Apart from a lower center of gravity, the Paceman benefits from stiffer springs and dampers, and its power steering assistance has been retuned to suit its racier mission. The Paceman is some 44 lb lighter than the Countryman, too.

We drove a pre-production, 1821hp Paceman Cooper S All4. The U.S.-spec Paceman will mirror the Countryman's powertrain choices: a 121-hp normally aspirated four and a 181-hp turbo four. You'll also be able to choose between a two-wheel-drive S and a normally aspirated Cooper and between six-speed manual and automatic transmissions. Mini officials told us that our test car was pretty close to final production specification, not least because it isn't wildly altered from a Countryman. But you only need drive a few feet down the road to feel that this car is different, especially if you've just stepped out of a front-wheel-drive Countryman Cooper S, which we had. The Paceman is tauter, more agile, and more tossable, and it feels more willing to be driven hard.

The changes also minimize one of the Countryman's less appealing dynamic oddities, which is steering whose resistance can suddenly diminish when you strike a bump, a reaction that can suddenly have you steering deeper into a corner than you planned. In the Paceman, this handling tic is still there, but it appears a lot less often. You'll more likely notice a ride that turns turbulent more rapidly than the Countryman's when the pavement turns bumpy, and the same faint uncertainty is there when the car is spearing along at speed. Neither the Countryman nor the Paceman is unstable, but you don't feel totally confident that the car will maintain an arrow-straight trajectory when the wind whips up and the road turns choppy, either. And given the Paceman's firmer ride, you need to think carefully before ordering the optional larger alloy wheels that further rob it of suppleness.

Although the All4 Paceman's steering weight is less prone to sudden fade-outs, steering feel is still lacking. You'll also detect the writhe of torque steer under hard acceleration, although there's less of this aboard an All4, of course, than in a front-wheel-drive Countryman. If you floor the throttle at 1500 rpm or less, the turbo's initial laziness forces you to drop down a gear more often than you'd like, but once it's spooled up, the turbo engine hauls this Cooper S to 62 mph in a tidy 7.5 seconds, although its power delivery can be a bit sudden if you aren't delicate with the accelerator.

As a daily transport tool, the Paceman is decently practical, and its rear seats are fairly easy to access. Headroom will be a bit tight for those over six feet, and making your escape will be a struggle for those who cast a broader shadow. The trunk is not generously dimensioned, but the rear seats fold forward. In other respects, the Paceman is much the same as the Countryman, right down to the same set of small flaws, including excess wind noise, an occasionally rattling dashboard, and the general sense that this car is not as refined as it should be.

Still, there will be plenty who find this decisively more stylish Mini hard to resist, especially as it's more practical than a regular Mini. The best Mini for your money remains the regular 2013 Cooper S, but Mini is asking only $650 more for this stylish Paceman compared with the Countryman, and it's easy to imagine it finding an enthusiastic following.

New For 2013

Bluetooth is now standard on all Cooper models; satellite radio is a $250 option and comes with a one-year free subscription. The technology package, $1750, was revised and now includes satellite radio, passive keyless entry, and Mini Connected. The premium package, also revised, costs $1250 and nets a dual-pane panoramic sunroof, automatic wipers, and automatic climate control.

Overview

BMW hit a home run when it introduced the reincarnated Mini. America’s appetite for small, fuel-efficient cars has something to do with the Mini Cooper’s success, but the fact that it’s a hoot to drive definitely doesn’t hurt. The Mini once distinguished itself in the automotive market because of its petite size, but with an increasing number of quality subcompacts on the market, the Mini now trades more on its driving dynamics and reputation as a premium small car than on its small size and fuel economy. The retro-chic Cooper continues with a center-mounted speedometer and toggle switch controls to recall the original Mini from decades past. Although it might not be the most ergonomically efficient interior, it’s one of the most aesthetically pleasing. The Mini is available in three body styles: a three-door hardtop, a softtop convertible, and the long-wheelbase Clubman with a set of split rear cargo doors and a half-size third door on the passenger side for easier rear-seat access. Engines come in normally aspirated and turbocharged forms, with the 208-hp John Cooper Works and limited-run GP versions epitomizing the Mini’s go-kart driving feel. As for customization options, Mini claims there are more than ten million possible combinations, so if you’ve always wanted to own a one-of-a-kind car, here’s your chance.

Safety

ABS; corner brake control; tire pressure monitoring; and front and side air bags are standard. Side curtain air bags are standard on the Cooper and Cooper Clubman; thorax air bags are standard on the Cooper Convertible. Adaptive xenon headlights, run-flat tires, and park distance control are optional.

You'll like:

High fun-to-drive factor

Retro-chic styling

You won't like:

Can get expensive

Awkward ergonomics

Key Competitors For The 2013 Mini Cooper

The Mini John Cooper Works GP is Mini’s most hardcore performance model. Even though this car’s future is uncertain given the redesign of the Cooper hardtop for 2014, our colleagues at Motor Trend took the GP to the track to see what it can do.

The 2015 Mini Cooper may still be small, but it will be offered with the sorts of driver assist systems usually found in bigger luxury vehicles, the automaker revealed today in a release. In fact, most items such as the adaptive cruise control and collision warning system have trickled down from BMW, and should help the 2015 Cooper boost its premium image.

Mini will soon be rolling out the completely redesigned 2015 Mini Cooper, and the brand has released some teaser photos of an upcoming Mini TV spot starring an English bulldog named Spike. The 2015 Mini Cooper will be officially revealed on November 18 in England.

The 2013 Mini Cooper provides such a great blank canvas for customization and sport upgrades. Our John Cooper Works Grand Prix test car looks great in dark gray paint with red accents, a substantial front apron, chunky red brake calipers, and the "GP" graphics on the side. A friend was amused, however, when I pulled into his driveway and he saw the "0069" sticker on the roof above the driver's door. Apparently our tester is #69 of 500 JCW GP editions to be manufactured for the U.S. market. (Mini Cooper JCW GP production is limited to 2000 units worldwide.) Customers who own the first-generation GP have the first option to buy the new one with the same number, as long as it falls in the range of 0001-0500. I wonder who had #0069 last time?

2013 Mini John Cooper Works GP

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